The National Transportation Safety Board says it is aware of an explosion and large fire involving an Iowa pipeline but has yet to open an investigation into its cause.
“We are monitoring the situation but have not opened an investigation at this time,” Sarah Taylor Sulick, a spokesperson for the NTSB, the federal agency responsible for investigating pipeline accidents, said in a Monday, Feb. 16, email to the Des Moines Register.
The Emergency Management Department in Washington County, where the blast occurred Saturday, said Sunday that an investigation to determine that cause of the explosion and fire continues. Pipeline owner Mid American Pipeline Co., a subsidiary of Enterprise Products Partners LP of Houston, said in a statement released through the department that it has representatives on the scene to conduct repairs.
In a news release dated Saturday, Feb. 14, but posted on Facebook Sunday afternoon, the emergency management department said the fire, which started about 10:50 a.m. Saturday in the 2000 block of rural 325th St., spread to both sides of the nearby Skunk River. Numerous fire departments fought the blaze and it was brought under control just before 1 p.m.
There were no injuries or damages to structure, the release said, and there is no continuing threat to the public.
The report said further updates will be provided as they become available.
Enterprise Products Partners did not respond to messages Sunday and Monday seeking comment.
The company says on its web page that it is a wholesale marketer of natural gas liquids, which MidAmerican said in its statement the pipeline carries as part of a network based in Conway, Kansas. An Iowa Utilities Commission map shows several natural gas and hazardous liquid pipelines in Washington County.
Company owned pipeline in massive 2020 blast; operated Iowa pipeline without permit
Enterprise Partners was the owner of a pipeline in Corpus Christi, Texas, involved in a catastrophic 2020 accident that received national news coverage. According to an NTSB report published in 2021, a dredge struck the 16-inch underwater pipeline on Aug. 21, 2020, setting off a geyser of propane gas and water that enveloped the dredge and support vessels, then ignited.
The report said the accident killed four people immediately; another person later died of injuries. The nearly $9.5 million dredge was damaged beyond repair and repairs to the pipeline cost more than $2 million.
The report said the dredging company was primarily to blame, but that the engineering drawings for the dredging project, provided by Schneider Engineering and Consulting, were deficient. It said that led to dredge operator Orion Marine Group’s project engineer misinterpreting them and communicating incomplete and inaccurate information to Enterprise Products during preparation for the dredging. The inaccurate information about the location of the pipeline “dissuaded Enterprise Products from protecting” it from excavation damage, the report said.
The report recommended updated policies and procedures for such projects.
In a separate case, Iowa regulators in April 2023 fined Enterprise Products Operating LLC $1.8 million, finding it had operated seven hazardous liquid pipelines and two undergrounds storage facilities in the state for two decades without the required permit. The company’s liability would have been $67.8 million were it not for a state law that caps violations at $200,000 each, the Iowa Utilities Board, now Iowa Utilities Commission, said in its order.
The company, which used the pipelines to transport refined petroleum products, told the board in a March 2023 hearing it had been unaware until notified by the state that it was operating the pipelines and storage facilities without permits. It had acquired the pipeline from a previous owner.
Saturday’s pipeline blast comes as state lawmakers are seeking to prevent pipeline companies from being granted eminent domain rights for certain kinds of pipeline construction. The move stems from controversy surrounding the granting of eminent domain powers to Ames-based Summit Carbon Solutions, which wants to build a carbon dioxide pipeline across Iowa and neighboring states.
Lawmakers sponsoring the legislation did not respond to messages Monday.
The long-planned pipeline would carry carbon dioxide emissions from ethanol plants to an underground sequestration site. Property owners and others who oppose construction of the pipeline point to a breach in a similar pipeline in Mississippi in 2020 that led to evacuations of people in the path of the plume of carbon dioxide, an asphyxiant, that the breach released, and resulted in 45 people seeking medical attention.
(This story has been edited to add additional information.)
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: US agency not yet involved in investigation of Iowa pipeline blast
Reporting by Kevin Baskins, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
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